I have searched through the forums to try and find an answer to this but unfortunately I wasn't able to find any relevent information.

I was under the impression that .bashrc and .bash_profile were executed every time a user logs in. But I have found that for some reason they are not getting executed when I log in under X.

The reason why I ask is because I lose a lot of command line functionality when I use the command line under X. For instance, I have no colours, the paths aren't correct, and its just not a nice environment to use. When I log in as my normal user at a command prompt, everything is fine.

When I was using Mandrake changes that I made to my .bash_profile would be reflected the next time I logged in under X and so I had assumed this was normal behaviour. But I guess I don't have something configured correctly. What can I do to get the colours and paths working properly at a command prompt when I log in under X? Any help would be greatly appreciated....

Just for the heck of it I logged into KDE as root and opened up a Konsole session. Sure enough, the colours and paths were correct - just like they are when logging in at a command prompt. I also noticed that I didn't have a .bashrc or a .bash_profile in /root.

So just for the halibut I renamed .bashrc and .bash_profile in the home directory of my real user, logged out, logged back in but the same thing happens. So I am beginning to think that there is a permissions problem somwhere. But where??